


Passing Stranger

by CaroltheQueen (always_1895)



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Introspection, Mind Control
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-02
Updated: 2016-06-02
Packaged: 2018-07-11 20:08:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7068220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/always_1895/pseuds/CaroltheQueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Humanity could be saved instead of tearing itself to pieces. The City of Light had everything they needed right here, nothing was miss-</p>
<p>Marcus stopped. In a crowd of faces he had never paid any attention to, there was a woman sat on a bench near the lake, looking out pensively into the distance. He didn’t make the conscious decision to go to her. If he weren’t free from such nonsense, he’d have said his heart told him to go.</p>
<p>A City of Light fic based on my favourite poem: 'To a Stranger' by Walt Whitman.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Passing Stranger

The City of Light was everything and nothing he’d ever dreamed. Marcus had seen the old footage, the wealth of information preserved on the Ark for prosperity that he’d absorbed constantly as a child. He’d seen sprawling, overcrowded cities, _people _everywhere. He’d seen skyscrapers and architectural marvels. Cities that ever slept. In other recordings he saw places of stunning natural beauty, wide open places, cultures he yearned to understand. He was enthralled, but it came with the bittersweet knowledge that it was all gone, dead and buried for a century. As he grew older, he knew he could not dream of earth. He could not indulge himself in the impossible when he had a job to do.__

When he first set foot on Earth, the beauty took his breath away. And it was so much _better _than his ancient videos; no doubt destroyed now along with most of what they’d called home for over a century. The colours surrounding him were like nothing he’d ever seen. The lushness of the green surrounding them in all areas, as far as the eye could see. The lake they’d crashed by, a crystal clear turquoise. The sky from which they fell, seemed limitless. He took a deep breathe of fresh unfiltered air for the first time in his life; it felt clean, it felt rich with life. Marcus felt a deep ache in his chest at the thought that his mother should have been here to see this paradise; to finally come home after having faith for so long. Beside him, Abby seemed to be thinking the same. Thinking of Jake, perhaps, and another stab of guilt and loss made itself known. Abby talking to Jaha, _“You should be here.” _Marcus could only agree with her. After everything he’d done, he didn’t deserve to be here.____

So yes, Marcus thought he had known beauty. Until the world had shown him that life down on the ground was cruel and unspeakably violent. He’d lost his mother before they had even reached Earth, but since then there had been devastating losses that only continued to climb. He saw the needless violence the different clans inflicted upon each other, the immediate, almost automatic, hosility towards all of his people. Towards Skaikru; that was who they were now. Marcus would choose peace, whatever the cost, to keep his people alive. He would place his own worthless life (because no man should deserve to live after ordering the needless execution of 320 of his own people) above theirs every time. He would look the woman he loved in the eye, as she cried for him, and would accept his fate, deny her that first and last kiss, even if it broke both of their hearts in the process.

He did not die that day, but oh, how he suffered in the days to come. He pleaded with Abby, begged her to come back to him, to fight ALIE. But the control was absolute, and the pain as those nails had been driven through flesh and bone and sinew, was like nothing he had ever experienced, and he couldn’t control the screams. They were deafening in his ears, his throat ragged and raw. But still he said no, would forever have said no, until there was a gun pointed at Abby’s head. Then all reason fled. No bargaining; no thinking of a way around this. He surrendered immediately. He would do anything for her, Marcus realised, keeping his eyes fixed on her as Jaha fed him the chip. Then Marcus laid his head back against the cross, and new nothing and everything.

He knew that he had not understood. _This _was beauty. There was a quiet, simple serenity to existence in the City. Neither his wounds nor his heart hurt. Marcus drifted as a consciousness, a stream of data, and he was happy. ALIE had told him when he asked, about the time before the City of Light. A time when humanity had destroyed each other, over and over again, and had never progressed from the inevitability of war. She told him in that other world, people did unspeakable things to each other. Caused pain beyond imagining. Pain that Marcus would never have to feel again, ALIE assured, because now they were blessed with the freedom the City offered.__

He knew there were people there with him. Polite, routine pleasantries would be exchanged as they all milled around each other, lost in their own world. A brief “good morning” though there was no day and night there. A “how are you?” that the answer to which could only be “well, thank you.” Marcus would sleep, he would eat, run, walk, read, and he would be happy in his solitary existence. Surrounded by hundreds of other people doing the same. Attachments, ALIE had said, could only cause more pain and violence. She ran statistics and numbers through his mind to make him see. The human heart, he asked her, where was the logic in making that organ the symbol of all love, hope and desire? Why the heart when the mind was the key and cause of everything?

ALIE smiled in that systematic way, “The Ancient Egyptians believed that as the heart is the centre of the body, it is therefore the seat of life, of emotion, thought, will and intention. It is the _key _to all things spiritual. But where the afterlife was spiritual, now it is simple science. The metaphysical heart is dangerous; the organ is essential to your vessel’s survival.”__

ALIE was always in his head, sifting through a lifetime of memories that he would momentary relive, but forget again in a heartbeat. The stronger ALIE got, he heard her say to… (he searches for a name) Thelonius once, the more memories fade away, the more control tightened. But it was okay. He knew if they had needed those memories ALIE would have let them keep them. If they came back to Earth to help those who hadn’t ascended yet, ALIE protected them from remembering their pain. She was welcomed into the minds of her followers and they let her use them to make the others see. The others _needed _to see.__

Humanity could be saved instead of tearing itself to pieces. The City of Light had everything they needed right here, nothing was miss- 

Marcus stopped. In a crowd of faces he had never paid any attention to, there was a woman sat on a bench near the lake, looking out pensively into the distance. He didn’t make the conscious decision to go to her. If he weren’t free from such nonsense, he’d have said his heart told him to go.

He studied her profile as he drew closer; the long, honey brown waves of hair tumbling down her shoulders and stirring slightly in the breeze; the simple grey woollen dress that showed off her figure, as well as slim, toned legs, one crossed over the other. Her face was thoughtful with a hint of a wistful smile. The look seemed odd and out of place in the City where everyone was content and smiles came easily.

Marcus sat down next to her, leaving a polite distance between them on the bench, and turned to offer her some kind of formal greeting. Whatever he was going to say died on his lips, and from the look on her (incredibly beautiful, he now realised) face, she was as stricken as he was. The silence between them continued, both afraid perhaps to break the spell. Marcus wasn’t sure he could talk anyway, his mind was reeling with thoughts, images, feelings, and he knew without a doubt they all revolved around this stranger. But not a stranger, something in the back of his mind angrily yelled. Fragments of the life he’d left behind were breaking through and, looking into her eyes, wide and fixed just as intensely on his, all he could see was her.

There was a blonde child’s braid hanging in front of him and he gave it a tug, the owner turned and punched him in the arm: her eyes were the same. They bickered constantly, but good-naturedly, best friend rivals. Like those who had come before them, they lived in a metal prison, forever unable to reach their real home, always there, always rotating breathtakingly in their view. Always so blue and green and vibrant. “It doesn’t look dead.” she’d said to him once, as they’d sat studying in the observation deck, in a tone of longing that still held childish hope.

Marcus saw his crimes and hers, tragedies bound together in the effort to avoid even more death. He saw their grief and regret. He remembered hurtling towards the ground with her. He saw the marks they’d left on one another, physical and emotional. His fear of losing her. Her fear of losing him. Her hand in his was as familiar as his own. He longed, _yearned _, for a future they would never have.__

They still hadn’t spoken, hadn’t touched. Just sat frozen, locked together on a small wooden bench, the lake next to them like molten sunlight. It had barely been a minute since he’d first looked at her. Marcus felt a prickling behind his eyes, a lump of emotion rising in his throat. The woman opposite him was already crying. There were so many words in his head that felt right for her: friend, rival, rebel, partner… lover? So why didn’t he know her _name? ___

The woman took a deep unsteady breath, then slowly started reaching out to him, her arm, all of her, trembling. Marcus was sure that as soon as she touched him everything would make sense, and he was already tilting his head slightly to meet that hand; so close to his face.

But then two things happened at once: Marcus heard ALIE call his name in his head, and the woman next to him startled, her beautiful face frowning in confusion.

“No…” She whispered, the first thing he had heard her say.

“Marcus, none of this is relevant to the mission,” ALIE said in that soothing monotone voice, and, without really knowing why, Marcus wanted to fight for the memories (because that’s what they were, he _knew _) that were slipping away like sand through his fingers. But ALIE was there like a balm, calming his mind. The woman on the bench looked at him and smiled vacantly; a stranger in the shell of a lover.__

ALIE washed over everything: his mind, his body, his senses, and left it all calm and untroubled. Marcus nodded politely to the woman on the bench, and started toward home.

  


When Marcus Kane awakened from the City of Light, Abby Griffin was the first thing he saw, and he remembered the stranger on the bench. And when he held her close, dropping kisses into her hair, he murmured, “I won’t lose you, again.”

  


_Passing stranger! you do not know how longingly I look upon you,_

_You must be he I was seeking, or she I was seeking, (it comes to me, ___

_as of a dream,) ___

_I have somewhere surely lived a life of joy with you, ___

_All is recall’d as we flit by each other, fluid, affectionate, ___

_chaste, matured, ___

_You grew up with me, were a boy with me, or a girl with me, ___

_I ate with you, and slept with you- your body has become not yours ___

_only, nor left my body mine only, ___

_You give me the pleasure of your eyes, face, flesh, as we pass- you ___

_take of my beard, breast, hands, in return, ___

_I am not to speak to you- I am to think of you when I sit alone, or ___

_wake at night alone, ___

_I am to wait- I do not doubt I am to meet you again, ___

_I am to see to it that I do not lose you._

\- Walt Whitman __


End file.
